


Things Better Left Unsaid

by alexygalaxy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, also lol did NOT edit very thoroughly, big pining energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 06:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17482847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexygalaxy/pseuds/alexygalaxy
Summary: im just real emo about widojest and i cannot stop thinkin about that Hupperdook bar scene so have some EXTREMELY angsty behind the scenes interpretation of what was going through caleb and jesters minds in that like. 1 minute of roleplaying.





	Things Better Left Unsaid

“Caleb!” cries Jester from a point in front of him that his drunk eyes fail to focus entirely on, “Waltz with me!”

He starts to consider attempting to protest, the alcohol slowing down his brain processes noticably; but before he’s managed to remember how exactly mouths make sounds, the familiar blue hands have grabbed his and are pulling his body clumsily behind them to the center of the bar. Caleb goes, vision finally centering on Jester’s persistently prim face. One of his hands has been dropped onto her shoulder and the other is still held in her grasp as she steels her body for the dance.

Shifting in crisp threes, Jester begins to push Caleb around the open floor. She is stiff, and he trails disjointedly behind her. The music transitions into mistimed triplets and other couples begin to stagger in a similarly awkward fashion - wasted Molly and Nott included. The sight is decidedly a mess, but Caleb’s scattered brain is still able to decipher how the dance ought to feel.

He relaxes slightly in Jester’s grip, allowing their sways to lilt into the upbeats of the melody as they spin slowly. He is glad to let his body take over, memories of gangly young muscles now moving the dance forward. It is possible that he notices Jester relax too, blue lips curling into a pleasant grin as her plan succeeds. They draw a few inches closer to each other, stiffness fading. The steps repeat on a loop in the back of their minds, leaving more space for them to consider each other.

Caleb is surprisingly conscious of the blood running through his palms; the feeling of another person’s warmth on his veins is highly unusual. He is not much of a man for physical contact, accepting it rarely and initiating it even less. Now is an exception.

He welcomes the sensation of Jester’s shoulder blades shifting under his palm as she tilts her head up to study his face. He does not pull his hand away from hers as it twitches in his grasp, tightening gently as Jester refuses to let this moment end. He does not flinch as her stomach brushes his and the frills of her dress lap around his ankles like waves of tall grass. He looks down at her face, gleaming nearly a foot below his, and does not immediately look away as his sober self is prone to do.

He allows himself to be felt, to be seen. He allows himself to be noticed. He allows himself to notice.

He notices only a very small set of things, partly because he does not have the brain capacity to process all of the hub bub around him, but also because he wants to notice everything about Jester. The way her eyes reflect the flickering candle light above them. Her faint voice as she absent-mindedly hums along with the piano man whose show she stole a few hours prior. Her hair brushing against his knuckles as she tilts her head back to gaze at him, giggling happily. Her fingers tapping on his shoulder in her signature cutesy manner, the pattern mimicked by his own hand against her back. The thievish grin that pulls her cheeks up as she notices him do so.

His heartbeat increasing and face flushing hot. A rare, thin smile across his lips. These last three things nearly alarm him, but instead Caleb lets them simply wash over him. Something about this moment has calmed his ever-anxious nerves. He is glad to feel happiness again, unbridled by fear for the first time in many, many years.

He shifts closer to Jester, pushing slightly on her back, and nearly tells her that “Jester, you are a very skilled dancer, ja?”

Nearly, but he cannot.

His brain has caught up enough to keep the words from coming out of his mouth. He is not allowed to have feelings like this. He is not allowed to feel … anything more than friendship. He has not earned that kind of reward.

He is still drunk however, and while he cannot say her name and admit to himslf that he has failed his own safeguards against certain feelings, he does manage to say _something_. He scrounges his muddled brain for something that mimicks this feeling, this warmness in his chest and in his cheeks and in the woman he holds in his touch. The last time he danced like this seems like a good bet.

“You were always a better dancer than me, Astrid. You were always so good.”

“Astrid?”

“Ja.”

Jester instinctually pulls back at the mention of a girl she does not know, and that brief second allows Caleb’s mind to fully return to his body, chastising him for being so weak. She has said something to him, he cannot hear it. He pushes Jester away, palms growing cooler as he tries to push through the crowd and forget her presence. This was a mistake; Jester will only be burned by his touch.

“I’m sorry.” He hopes it is not too late to leave her unscorched. “I’m sorry.”

“Caleb,” her soft voice still follows him, “do you need to go to sleep?”

Caleb refuses to answer, instead focusing on the door to the tavern, needing an immediate exit from this situation before it becomes yet another thing he cannot control.

“No, no, no. No.”

It is already out of his control as that too-familiar touch brushes his neck once more, yanking the collar of his jacket backwards.

“You are not going to pass out in the street,” she scolds, returned to her prim state of earlier. “You told me to be in charge of this.” She drags him helplessly behind her, back through the crowd and towards the stairway. She mutters some words about how he is already stinky enough and does not need to sleep in the sewer, and some more about how she does actually care about him you know, and just a few more about how it was a fun dance before he got all Caleb-y and walked away.

The doorknob creaks and Caleb realizes he is in a bedroom. He feels himself being guided onto the soft mattress and his body sinks, exhausted from a night of drinking and the mental panic he’s put himself through. Her blue face is leaning over him now, gentle and intent as she tries to turn his body comfortably. He begins to lie back and his arm, which had been draped over her shoulder, begins to pull across her back. Once again, his knuckles brush her bobbed blue hair as his hand rests on the unsurprisingly soft nape of her neck and Caleb Widogast, for the second time tonight, nearly does something that is utterly egregious.

He nearly turns his hand up into her hair to draw the back of her head in so that her satisfied little half smile can meet his own helpless grin.

He also nearly whispers against her presumably soft lips three words that he has not had the courage (or even really the ability) to say for over a decade.

He cannot do either of those things, and thinks he may hate himself for it when he wakes up. Instead he lets his hand linger just a moment on Jester’s skin and mutters three words which will be meaningless to her, but they are all he is able to muster.

“You … are … blue.”

Jester laughs (and though Caleb could not possibly know it, her heart is rocking in her chest as she tries to decipher exactly how much of her love she will give to him, or perhaps how much he will be willing to receive) and says three words of her own back, hoping the intent is reciprocated as gently as he needs so he is able to accept it.

“Yes, I am.”

Jester nearly stops there, but it is not enough, she has too much love to give and it begins to spill out of her mouth before she can stop it. She needs him to know that he is wonderful to her.

“And you are very nice. And a little stinky.”

Caleb, against his better judgement, takes a little bit of that love and stores it inside of him. He does not quite have enough space, and so he lets out a few more words to make room. A little more of his own love escapes with them.

“One of those things is true. And you are blue.”

Jester’s face curls into the saddest smile Caleb has ever seen on it, and he thinks for a moment that it resembles one of his. She gets the closest to saying the real three words, but she still catches herself, barely keeping them inside of her, knowing she cannot waste them in this moment and risk Caleb spurning them. She will save them, for as long as she needs to, until she can speak them and Caleb will listen. She approximates something she thinks he will take.

“I’m sure that … Astrid … loves you very much.”

She reaches for the blankets and tugs them up towards his chin. She brushes his shoulder on the way down, passing the same place she touched when they were dancing just minutes earlier. She is glad to have had even a few moments with an truly free Caleb.

Jester glances at his eyes, now barely open and certainly lost in the dark shadows of the bedroom. That Caleb is gone now, and she will go too.

She does not bend down to kiss his forehead. She stands, silently, and walks to the door of the bedroom. She slips out through the crack, not lingering, and waits until it is fully shut behind her before blowing him a kiss good night.


End file.
